Acropolis News

New Acropolis Győr joins the cultural initiative of the prison of Győr-Moson-Sopron County, with an artistic program entitled “Phoenix”, which was attended by around fifty particpants between inmates and prison staff.

The presentation included a selection of songs and poems from the classics of Hungarian and world poetry about spiritual purification and renewal, including the poetry of the 6th century philosopher Boethius. During the intervals between the poems and songs artists also spoke about the meaning of selected texts, including the Consolation of Philosophy by Boethius.

“Thinking freely, acting together” was the title of an evening program organized by the Hunyadi Cultural Center of New Acropolis Hungary in the context of World Philosophy Day 2016. The activities focused on what philosophy can provide as weapons against hatred and social exclusion which are so characteristic of our times. The program began with a brief talk about the human ideal according to the ancient Greeks. Participants also worked in teams to test and further develop their cooperative team-building skills throughout various exercises. The program ended with participants enjoying a musical version of a poem by John Donne.

The Environmental Protection Group of New Acropolis Pécs placed nesting boxes for birds along the Kis-Tubes-Tubes line of the Mecsek mountains. Volunteers were accompanied by members of a waste management company and by students of a local elementary school and their teacher. The nesting boxes were made and painted by the students. The walk along the hillside of the mountain was enlivened with storytelling and games while the children looked for suitable trees to set up the nesting boxes.

For the 25th time, organized jointly by the Budapest Center of New Acropolis Hungary and Főkert Zrt., volunteers gathered on the occasion of Earth Day to make one of the main tourist attractions of Budapest, Gellért Hill, even more attractive. Participants included four secondary schools, homeless people supported by a foundation, and volunteers from the neighbourhood.

In a span of 5 hours, about 100 pairs of hands collected 70 sacks of garbage, painted 20 benches and 200 metres of railings, and removed several wheelbarrows of earth from the drainage works.

At the beginning of the day, each group of volunteers received a virtue by spinning the Wheel of Virtues, which helped them to contemplate the efforts made for bettering the environment in the context of such ideas as creativity, courage, attention and resolution.

As part of a decades-long collaboration with the Budapest Association for Civil Protection and Disaster Management, various volunteers received a flood protection training in the ‘Hunyadi’ Center of New Acropolis Hungary.

Based on the example of the 2001 flooding on the upper River Tisza, participants of the course were introduced to the main types of dams, their scope of application and the process of protection from emergency through relocation of the population to damage assessment and reconstruction.

The theoretical part of the course was followed by a practical training, during which participants learned how to effectively build a dam from sand bags.

For the second year, New Acropolis participated in the Night of the Houses of Culture, a series of programmes organized with the aim of promoting the activities of cultural institutions. Held in Budapest, the evening-long event at New Acropolis was titled “Small Steps for Man” and comprised three parts.

First, a talk about Tibetan mandalas as symbols of completeness titled “”One Step Toward Ourselves””.
The second part, titled “”One Step Toward Others””, focused on volunteering and offered an opportunity for participants to try various team-building activities.

During the third part, titled “”One Step Toward Harmony” ”, participants could get acquainted with different instruments with the help of professional musicians. The night ended with Hungarian and Irish folk dances.

In commemoration of  World Philosophy Day the Hunyadi Cultural Center of New Acropolis Hungary held a round table discussion under the title Volunteering with a Human Face. The participants invited were members of civil society who actively work for others in some area of life. New Acropolis has already had the opportunity to cooperate with some of them, or with the organizations they represent, for example at the Civil Island, one of Europe’s largest summer festivals.

The guests, most of whom came from the educational, pedagogical and social assistance fields, were involved in a discussion centering around the personality-forming power of communities and the importance of prevention and of looking at problems from different points of view. Philosophy as love of wisdom and the idea of the active wisdom also came to be discussed since, as Koichiro Matsuura, former Director-General of UNESCO put it, philosophical thinking is “the foundation for human rights and a just society”.

Participants agreed that this is the way leading to peaceful coexistence and the establishment of a better quality of life, the common goal of everybody involved in volunteering.